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Graham Reilly rekindles his love affair with a city that
was his home for almost three years.

I'm sitting at my favourite table at the Bach Dang Cafe and I'm
looking out for the Winklepicker Boy. I scan the bedlam of the busy
street corner and the passing pedestrians but he, his distinctive
slippery shuffle and his rattling shoeshine box, are nowhere to be
seen.

I sip my iced coffee and keep my eyes peeled. It's my second
visit to Saigon (few in the south call it Ho Chi Minh City) since
returning to Australia after living in Vietnam's largest and most
vibrant metropolis for nearly three years, three years during which
I fell in love with the place and its enterprising and optimistic
people, the sultry ginand- tonic heat and the sometimes head-aching
madness of it all."

Hey you, you want shoe shine. Very cheap. One dollar," were the
first words the Winklepicker Boy said to me then, before he became
the selfappointed maintenance manager of my own black brogues and
brown Blundstone boots.

The first thing I noticed about him were his shoes. While his
Tshirt and shorts were just a few loose threads away from being
rags, his feet were the proud bearers of one of the finest pairs of
black winklepickers I'd ever seen. Long, slender and slightly
dangerous, they gleamed like the Saigon River on a moonlit
night.

He told me the oversized shoes were all that he had left of his
father, of his family. In the room he slept in at night with some
other street boys, he clasped them tight to his heart, otherwise
they'd be gone in the morning.

I sit back and watch the world hurtle by on the corner of
Pasteur and Le Loi streets, where it's always rush hour in this
city of about seven million people and half as many motorbikes. A
passing hawker catches my eye and offers me a pair of Ray Ban
sunglasses that we both know are not really Ray Ban sunglasses. The
old woman who runs the cigarette stall outside beckons me with a
onetooth grin and wordlessly, I manage to convey that I don't
smoke. She offers me a parcel of rice wrapped in a banana leaf.

I could sit here all day - which I have done happily many times
before, simply observing the city at work and play - but I decide
to revisit my favourite haunts, the places that were the joyful
ingredients of my daily life here.

So I edge past the corner service station - one man, one
oil-stained rag, a pump, a handful of spanners and a plastic
container of two-stroke fuel - and turn right down Le Loi (the
city's main avenue) and head for the Ben Thanh market.

I refuse the invitations of the cyclo drivers ("Hey you. Where
you go? We go round, one dollar.

No problem") because with cyclos you inevitably end up paying
more than you bargained for. And besides, the centre of Saigon is
best seen on foot. The greater city is a chaotic sprawl but
District 1 is surprisingly compact and intimate.

The French took control of Saigon in 1859 and quickly embarked
on a building program that included wide tree-lined boulevards and
architecture that would not look out of place in Paris, and much of
it survives today in Saigon's inner city districts. It may not be
as concentrated as it is in Hanoi's old quarter but some of the
best examples of French colonial building are to be found in Saigon
- the grand central post office, the glorious wedding cake of a
town hall (now the headquarters of the People's Committee), Notre
Dame Cathedral, the Opera House, the Majestic Hotel, the main court
house, and the many shops that line Le Loi and Nguyen Hue streets
and the city's other main thoroughfares.

It is easy to see why the French called it the Pearl of the
Orient.

Indeed, the French architectural legacy is everywhere in the
city, not just the centre. You just have to look out for the
elegant villas and public buildings that are often hidden behind a
sometimes dishevelled modern veneer.

Built in 1914, the Ben Thanh market occupies an entire block and
is a lively jamboree of smiling, beckoning vendors offering
everything in Vietnam that seems to have been grown, woven, sewn,
cooked and enthusiastically manufactured to infringe international
copyright. Outside I watch an old woman having her chin shaved of
unwanted hair with an ancient electric razor. Inside, the dazzling
daylight is filtered through the central dome and it's a refreshing
respite from the heat. I stop and breathe it all in as the business
of life echoes around this bustling playground of energetic buying,
selling and haggling.

I have been to similar markets in Cambodia and Laos but none
matches this for variety of goods being sold or the warmth and
ebullience of those doing the selling. Despite the recent troubles
they have had to endure, the Vietnamese are a warm and fun-loving
people, always ready to celebrate something. This is particularly
true in the south, where the year-long sunshine and the
considerable distance from the cold fingers of central government
in Hanoi have given the people a distinctive feisty independence
and joie de vivre.

It is this spirit that makes Saigon the heart and soul of the
country."

Sir, sir, you buy T-shirt, sir.

Calvin Klein, one hundred per cent. Polo shirt, very
beautiful.

From America," a young woman shouts to me.

That's America, the one just on the outskirts of Saigon. The
little polo player on the breast of the shirt looks like he's about
to tumble off his horse but I buy the shirt anyway. I'd always
fancied myself in canary yellow and for $5 you can't go wrong.

There are enough shoes here to shod most of South-East Asia. I
stop at the fruit stalls, where the women sit cross-legged on the
tiled floor, or elevated on wicker platforms, like Buddhas in a
temple, and buy a dragonfruit.

With its devil-red skin and hornlike spurs, it looks prehistoric
but tastes post-modern. As a Westerner I pay more than I should but
there are so many dong to the dollar that it's not worth worrying
about. I have seen visitors angrily haggling with a coconut seller
over what amounts to a few cents and wondered whether bargaining
can be taken too far.

I cannot resist the entreaties of the food vendors and take a
seat on a child-size plastic chair and have a bowl of beef noodle
soup, or pho bo, as it is called locally. Effectively the country's
national dish, pho is a fragrant bowl of broth with beef or
chicken, noodles, spring onions, bean shoots and a garnish of fresh
herbs. As well as a great way to start the day it is a lifesaving
hangover remedy. I remind myself to pay a visit to my favourite pho
shop, Pho Hoa, in District 3.

I bypass the butchers' section, where the women cheerily slit
the throats of a variety of anxious looking fowl, and skin frogs as
they would peel off a rubber glove by the kitchen sink. I wave and
smile my way past the flower sellers and out into Le Thanh Ton
Street. I move along, constantly gazing upwards to admire the
graceful colonial French architecture that crowns the functional
shops below, like tiaras on care-worn faces. Weaving along the
footpath, between shoppers, beggars and street stalls, I reach my
tailor of choice, Mr Dung.

The Melbourne comedian Hung Le tells this joke about his fellow
countrymen: How do you know if you have been burgled by a
Vietnamese? Answer: He has done your homework and stolen your
sewing machine. And it's true, if you want to have clothes made,
Vietnam is the place to do it. At any time of the day, anywhere in
the country, someone is sewing something worth wearing. Mr Dung
(pronounced Yoong) greets me with a warm smile of reaquaintance and
memories of many suits past, and I order a handful of shirts, which
we agree I can collect in five days. Experience tells me I should
go back in six or seven. Needless to say, the cost is a fraction of
the amount it would be in Australia and the result is far superior
to anything you can buy off the rack there.

I consider a visit to a War Remnants Museum (previously known
rather indelicately as the Museum of Chinese and American War
Crimes), to remind myself of the years of hardship suffered by
Vietnamese people during what they call the American War but decide
against it. While the city has many beautiful pagodas and temples
and fascinating, if slightly tired, museums worth visiting, Saigon
for me is about walking the streets, where with every step you are
almost guaranteed to see something you have never seen before. It
is about breathing, smelling, tasting, absorbing as much as you
can. Tourism by osmosis.

So I decide on a cheerier course of action with a walk down to
the river. This requires crossing the road at what I call the
Russian Roulette Roundabout just outside the Ben Thanh market.
Here, four main arteries converge into a raging white water of
smoke-belching buses, trucks, cars, motorbikes, bicycles and
previously unknown mutations thereof. As Sinatra should have sang,
"if you can cross the street here, you can cross it anywhere". I
take the plunge and miraculously the traffic parts and flows around
me. The secret of survival when crossing a busy Saigon street is do
not stop. You will just get everybody confused and tears, or
multiple internal injuries, are inevitable.

Safely across, I admire the schoolgirls cycling by, straight
backed and effortlessly elegant in their white ao dais. A man, his
face weather-beaten to old brown parchment, splutters though the
chaos with what seems like 50 limp and weary ducks strapped to his
motorbike. I hand a few dong to a beggar I recognise; her face was
dissolved by napalm when she was a child.

I head down Le Loi Street and what I notice is a growing number
of upmarket shops selling beautifully crafted clothes and linen and
turn into Nguyen Hue Street and down to Ton Duc Thang Street. I
look out for one of the many touts selling boat rides along the
Saigon River. I bargain him down to 200,000 dong (they always ask
for too much) for a two-hour tour in an elongated wooden motor
boat. Every time I am in Saigon I take this trip, which should be
mandatory for any visitor.

The Saigon River is a working port, busy with the din of life
and commerce. (From here, you can also catch the hydrofoil to Vung
Tau, the former French seaside resort of Cap St Jacques. But then,
you'd be disappointed as the beaches there are not worth the
journey. Indeed, Vietnam is not a place to come for a beach holiday
at all).

My captain and crew is a bright-eyed middle-aged woman who
doesn't speak English but has smiling, nodding and pointing down to
a fine art. We putter off across the river, dodging other small
craft and thick floating islands of bright-green vegetation, then
under the large neon signs advertising Mercedes-Benz and Sky TV,
and into another world.

I glance back at the Saigon skyline, which seems to stretch
upwards with every visit, and towards the ramshackle wooden and
corrugated-iron shanties lining the tributary that ushers us into
the heart of the still mostly rural District 4. As we glide further
into the rice fields and reed beds, it's hard to believe that we
are only a few minutes away from the frenetic city centre, where
pavement cobblers hammer at strips of leather and unwary tourists
stand dumbfounded as speedy motorcycle thieves disappear into the
distance with their cameras and handbags. We wave at women toiling
in the rice paddies, at bare-chested men in boats groaning under
the weight of freshly-cut reeds. I sit back with the sun in my face
and listen to the silence, punctuated only by the throaty cough of
our engine.

An hour later we emerge into the Saigon River like
time-travellers and begin putt-putting our way back to the city,
past jam-packed ferries, giant container ships, huge wooden rice
boats bloated like pregnant whales, and all manner of smaller
vessels transporting and selling everything imaginable. Down here,
families live on their boats, river police sleep on their floating
stations and tend their flowerpots, and the villagers on the
riverbanks go about their lives on foot, motorbike and bicycle.

I can feel the dusk in the shadows being cast across Dong Khoi
Street (which Graham Greene made famous as Rue Catinat in The
Quiet American) as I stroll back to my friend's house near
Notre Dame, where I am staying. Past the Majestic, and the
Continental Hotel, the Cafe Givral, the antique, art and silk
shops, and the new designer clothing and homewares stores.

There is so much history here, so much that evokes the past,
particularly that which we associate with the war. But I see that
things are changing. New and taller hotels are opening . There are
not so many tacky tourist shops selling fake dog-tags and
reproduction opium pipes. The ranks of the beggars are thinning.
There are more cars and fewer cyclos. The street's rough edges are
disappearing and I can feel the smooth skin of prosperity. But
still, it retains much of the character that makes it what it is.
There is no place like this.

Outside the central post office, my favourite French building in
Saigon, I am surrounded by young girls selling postcards, stamp
albums and bound collections of old Vietnamese currency.

"Hey you, you buy from me?" they yelp. "I no lucky today. I no
sell nothing."

I take a seat on one of the varnished wooden benches inside and
study the vintage maps of Indochine painted on the walls. I nod to
a large canvas of Uncle Ho, the man who beat the French and set the
stage for the defeat of American military might. What would he
think of Saigon today? Did he know that half the population is
under 25 and has no memory of the war? That many of his countrymen
who fled in 1975 were now returning to do business and invest in
the resurgent economy? Or that elegant French cafes are sprouting
up by the park in Le Duan Street, where not so long ago the only
things for sale were cheap greeting cards and five-dollar
hookers?

He'd be happy with the recent restoration of this post office.
It's grand and cavernous and echoes with the sound of people paying
their bills, posting letters and making excited telephone calls to
their families elsewhere in the country or overseas.

As I sit there, my new pack of postcards in my lap, I plan the
evening ahead. Perhaps it's the balmy warmth, the half-hearted
street lighting, the drifting smoke from pavement barbecues and the
constant buzz and hum of the traffic but Saigon nights have a
dreamlike quality about them, and should be savoured at every
opportunity.

I decide on a swim in the 14th-floor pool of the Diamond Plaza
building; a pre-dinner beer at Saigon Saigon, the delightful, if
expensive, rooftop bar at the Caravelle Hotel that has an almost
panoramic view of the city; a barbecue dinner at Luong Son
restaurant in Ly Tu Trong Street, which is always lively and full
with Vietnamese families; then a quick stroll next door to the Blue
Gecko bar, which has the most raucous music and best pool table of
the multitude of bars in town.

Later, and depending how much I've drunk, I'll take a taxi down
to Pham Ngu Lao Street in the heart of the backpacker district
where the restaurants and bars stay open later than anywhere else
in town. Tomorrow? I might go to the old presidential palace where
the North Vietnamese tanks so dramatically burst through the gates
in 1975. Then again, I might just wander the streets.

My reverie is shaken by a familiar call.

"Hey you, you want shoeshine? Very cheap. Two dollar."

I turn and there, grinning at me from the steps outside, is the
Winklepicker Boy. He's taller but bean-shoot thin, and from where
I'm sitting, his shoes still look way too big for his feet. But
they are polished to perfection and, if anything, look more
dangerous than ever.

Graham Reilly is an Age journalist. Two of his novels,
Saigon Tea and Five Oranges, are partly set in Saigon.

FAST FACTS

Getting there: Several airlines fly to Saigon
via Bangkok, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and other cities. I always
take the Vietnam Airlines direct flight from Melbourne, and book
through Hoa Hop (Central Travel) at 163 Barkly St, Footscray (03)
9689 8989.

Diamond Plaza: 34 Le Duan Street. For a fee you
can use the gym and the roof-top pool.

Currency: You get a lot of dong for your dollar
- 12,033 at last count.

More information:
http://www.vietnamtourism.com

Some optional extras: Take a river trip along
the Saigon River from the corner of Nguyen Hue St and Ton Duc Thang
St; hire a car and driver, or take a Sinh Cafe bus, and head down
to Can Tho and the lush Mekong Delta; make a day-trip to the
Vietcong's underground tunnels at Cu Chi; it's only short flight to
Nha Trang for freshly caught seafood on the beach or to Phu Quoc
Island (book at Traveland in Nguyen Hue St).

Safety: There is no physical threat but watch
out for bag snatchers on motorcycles.